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Price Surname Genealogy

Price and Pryce are surnames common among those of Welsh
ancestry, as they are an anglicized form of the Welsh patronymic ap
Rhys,
meaning "son of Rhys." Rhys also left the surnames Rees, Rice and
Preece. Pryce continues to be a variant spelling of Price.

Wales. The Prices
of Rhiwlas
in
present day Gwynedd have an ap Rhys lineage dating back to the 11th
century.Rhys ap Meredydd (Rhys Fawr)
fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field in 1485 and was suitably
rewarded.The Price spelling was adopted
sometime
around 1600.This family remained
influential in what was then Merionethshire until the 20th century.

The Pryces
of Montgomeryshirebegan
with Rhys who was slain during the Wars of
the Roses in 1469. The line continued
with
various sheriffs during the 16th and 17th centuries and Sir John Pryce
of Newton Hall, MP and baronet,
and ended in 1791. However, Montgomeryshire continued to be an outpost for the
Pryce name. Elsewhere the Price spelling had become the norm.
By the
19th century, more Welsh Prices were to be found in Glamorgan in south
Wales. Thomas Price was one of the three partners in the
Dowlais inronworks in the 1760's (said to have been the largest in the
world at that time). Many Prices remained in the area.

England. Prices crossed the border into England:

Prices from Montgomeryshire settled in
Shropshire in the 16th century. Thomas Price was vicar of
Shrewsbury and
his son, the Rev. Thomas Price, was chaplain to Charles I before he
became
King.

while Robert Price from
Denbighshire, a prominent lawyer and judge, acquiredthe Foxley estatein Herefordshire in
1691. His descendant
Sir Uvedale Price wrote with some persuasion about architecture and
design a
hundred years later.

The Prices of Trengwainton in Cornwall
descended from the Welsh
plantation owners in Jamaica. Many of them served in the British
army. Dennis Price was a film and TV actor in the 1950's and
1960's.

Price
also emerged, independently of the Welsh, as a surname in southeast
England. It is thought possibly to have derived there from the
Old French
pris and denoted someone who set prices.

By the time of the 1881 census, the largest number of Prices in
England was in Staffordshire and Lancashire.

America.John
Price
came to Jamestown in Virginia either in 1611 or 1620. His
descendants
were Virginia planters until the time of the Civil War.
One line under Captain John Price
migrated to Kentucky in the 1790’s.Samuel W. Price, born there, was a Union General during the
Civil War.He, however, lost his sight in
his later
years.Other Price lines were to be
found in Missouri.Sterling
Price became Governor of Missouri in 1852.
Known to his troops as “Old Pap,” he ended up a General on the
Confederate side
in the Civil War.His two sons Edwin and
Celsus were both colonels in the Confederate army.
Caribbean.Francis Price from Wales
was an army captain
in the English capture of Jamaica in 1655.He stayed on and his descendants grew wealthy from Rose Hall and
their other
Jamaican sugar plantations.

Welsh Pryces were reported in Jamaica in the
1850’s.George Pryce left Jamaica for
America as a young man in the 1880’s and graduated as a young “black”
doctor in
Tennessee.He went on to found Pryce’s
Pharmacy in Los Angeles, a drugstore on the corner of Pryce Street
which is run
by his grandson today.

Canada.WilliamPrice was a
pioneer of the Canadian lumber trade. Coming from an impoverished
Welsh
family in London, he arrived in Quebec in 1810 as a young man with a
mandate to
supply lumber for the British navy. In the succeeding years, his
name
became synonymous with the development of the Seguenay region as a
timber
producer. The family pulp and paper empire continued into the
20th
century. The old company headquarters, Price House, is today a
landmark
in Quebec City and the location of the Quebec Premier's official
residence.

Select
Price Miscellany.

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for
further stories and accounts:

Richard Price was a
Welsh moral and political philosopher of the 18th century..Thomas Price, known by his
bardic name Carnhuanawc, was a Welsh historian of the
early 19th century.William Price was a pioneer of
the Canadian lumber trade in the early 19th century.William Price was a 19th
century physician and eccentric, best known today for his promotion of
cremation.Vincent Price was an American
actor known for his performances in horror movies. Dick Price was co-founder in
1962 of the Esalen Institute in California.Jonathan Pryce is a well-known
Welsh stage actor who has made his name in musicals.Nick Price from Zimbabwe is one
of the leading golfers of the world.Select Prices Today